Split ownership projects up to 10MW under Feed-in Tariffs

It will be possible to register projects totalling up to 10 MW for Feed-in Tariffs (FiTs), provided that they are configured as two separate plants of no more than 5 MW, one of which is community owned.

This follows an announcement by the Department of Energy & Climate Change on 13 Nov 2014, as part of government's response to the community FiTs consultation.

The relevant paragraph in the announcement reads as follows:

"two community projects (or one community project and one commercial project), each up to 5MW, will now be able to share a single grid connection and receive separate Feed in Tariffs"

We will provide further details on how this provision will operate as they become available.

Legislative background

The government announced in July 2013 that it intended to increase the ceiling for Feed-in Tariffs to 10 MW for community projects. The ceiling would remain at 5 MW for all other projects.

Before this commitment had been honoured, the European Union changed its guidance on state aid clearance for renewables projects.

The government's consultation on community FiTs highlighted why this change would make it difficult to raise the ceiling as originally intended.

Several respondents, including Community Energy England, therefore suggested alternative approaches which could achieve partially similar results.

The government's consultation response in November 2014 proposed the adoption of one of these alternative approaches as described above.